A Kansas House committee recommended a budget for the state’s six public universities that freezes tuition rates, reduces need-based student aid, requires development of plans to lower central administration expenditures by 10% and offers faculty one year instead of two to fix their academic shortcomings before they are potentially fired.

The Republican-led House Higher Education Budget Committee voted Wednesday to apply a 2.5% reduction to operating grants at the research-focused University of Kansas, Kansas State University and Wichita State University. An equivalent reduction wasn’t applied to other universities under the wings of the Kansas Board of Regents: Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University and Pittsburg State University.

The committee’s plan withheld $12 million — $2 million for each university — to incentivize removal from the curriculum of material associated with critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion. The universities could get access to that cash by convincing the State Finance Council, which includes the governor as well as House and Senate leadership, that CRT and DEI were no longer featured in most required courses.

The committee voted to reduce need-based student financial aid by $2.3 million, but inserted $5.5 million into the budget for Blueprint for Literacy. It’s a statewide program created in 2024 by the Legislature to train current teachers and college students preparing to become teachers in the art of improving K-12 student reading skills. The program has fallen out of favor among some Republicans.

Shawnee Rep. Adam Turk, the Republican chairman of the higher education committee, said partial funding for Blueprint for Literacy was an attempt to find middle ground between GOP lawmakers who wanted to kill the initiative and GOP legislators who believed it had merit.

“This was a compromise,” Turk said. “There’s still work to be done.”

A gut punch

Among nine members of the House committee, Democrats expressed alarm with Turk’s budget outline while Republicans offered gratitude for the plan presented by the chairman.

“I appreciate you taking the time to bite the bullet,” said Rep. Paul Waggoner, R-Hutchinson.

“What is the goal here? Is it just to cut money? Is that it?” said Democratic Rep. Mike Amyx of Lawrence.

Rep. Brett Fairchild, R-St. John, said he didn’t believe legislators responsible for shrinking the proposed higher education budget were driven by animus. Fairchild said the state was relying on budget reserves to cover large deficits that were unsustainable. He said House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, established a goal of reducing overall state expenditures by $200 million during this legislative session.

“Maybe the Democratic side doesn’t view that as being realistic,” Fairchild said. “I don’t think necessarily we’re cutting spending just for the sake of cutting it.”

Democratic Rep. Kirk Haskins of Topeka said the budget plan approved by Republicans on the committee was a gut punch to higher education. He said university and college students deserved better than “political games” and “ideological punishment” in the state budget.

“Tens of millions of dollars were stripped from the Board of Regents and our public institutions with no transparency, no justification and no plan for students,” Haskins said. “Every four-year university is now effectively held hostage to political litmus tests around DEI and CRT, whatever legislators decide those terms mean on any given day.”

Nice and calm

The back-and-forth prompted Turk, the committee’s chairman, to offer analysis of how he viewed the budget process. He said he wasn’t aware of any legislator who enjoyed diminishing state spending on higher education. He said he was ordered to hit a budget cut target for colleges and universities — an amount he didn’t disclose — and the package supported by a majority of the committee would fall short of that directive.

“If you think any of this was done lightly, you’re mistaken,” Turk said. “It’s easy to add money. It’s hard to cut it. Unfortunately, somebody has to do it at some point somewhere along this line. There is no win in this scenario for this committee.”

He said comments from committee members opposed to the higher education budget plan were difficult to take.

“I’m trying desperately to be as nice, calm as I can be,” Turk said. “I understand politically where we have to be. That’s fine. I understand it’s hard. I won’t blame you, but the burden does fall on some of us more than others.”

Meanwhile, state funding for community and technical colleges was altered by the higher education committee through a series of amendments that Turk indicated were endorsed by community college lobbyists. Turk said the overall financial impact on two-year schools would be modest.

In the plan for the state’s six technical colleges and 19 community colleges, access to a share of $5 million in state aid for capital expenditures was made contingent on trustees of those colleges not raising the mill levy relied on to set local property taxes for those institutions.

The budget drafted by the higher education committee could be revised by the House and Senate before included in a bill and forwarded to the governor.

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Story via Kansas Reflector 

Photo: Shawnee Rep. Adam Turk, the Republican chairman of the House Higher Education Budget Committee, gains approval of his package of state university budget adjustments that freeze tuition rates, seeks plans for a 10% cut in central administration spending, withholds $12 million to guarantee demise of DEI in courses and shortens to one year the time allowed for faculty to overcome academic shortcomings before potentially fired. (Photo by Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector)